Helpful Score: 2
I've had this book for a few months now, received in a swap because it looked interesting, but I decided to read it now because I'm currently teaching the unit on Ancient Egypt. I feel like it made this period of history come alive for me, because I think I taught this unit with much more enthusiasm. I liked when something occurred in the novel that I was able to recognize from the material I was teaching my students (though the stuff I taught was much cleaner...lol). Anyway, the author really makes this time period come alive by giving the characters clear personalities. For the most part, each character has some hidden agenda or deeper plan behind their actions than what they are portraying to the outside world. I liked how Cleopatra was portrayed as a real person, with real fears about her actions, and gave the reasons why she felt she needed to portray to the world "Cleopatra the Queen and Goddess" (her spy network feeding her information about her reputation in Rome was a nice touch to show how we may have misinterpreted her down the road). A few of the characters were quite unlikable frankly (some because they were villains and were meant to be), but for the life of me, I can't really figure out what Cleopatra's attraction to Julius Caesar was because he was portrayed as a jerk (power I guess was the attraction and that was made clear). Marc Antony came off better as a flawed hero. My only complaint about this book is that it got repetitive at times, certain descriptions and quotes were repeated over and over again.
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